Vedas and Vedic Literature
Not many people are familiar with the ancient Sanskrit Literature of India. The Chapter 4 provides a glimpse into the vastness of this literature; the emphasis is on the most ancient books - the Vedas and the Vedic Literature inspired directly by the Vedas. The aim of the review is to enrich a reader’s knowledge about the Vedic Literature commonly not available and generally misunderstood.
The uniqueness of the Vedic Literature is that the references of the Vedas, are found in most books of Sanskrit Literature but the references of other books are not found in the Vedas. The four Vedas for the Aryans are the oldest books of knowledge. The guesswork aside, it is indeterminable how much development in language and grammar went on before the compilation of the Vedas in their final form, or in their initial form that is their final form. Only the final form of the Vedas exists. The Vedas are the source of Sanskrit grammar and the science of word formation. A remarkable feature of the Vedas, accepted by all scholarly in the East and the West (Max Muller et al.), is that there is no change in the Vedas since they were first handed down in some unknown ancient times in the Vedic Civilization; there is no change of a mantra or of a word in a mantra or of a syllable in a word. This invariance in the final form of the four Vedas is a phenomenon in itself. The majority of the present-day Aryans, known now as the Hindus are ritualistic, yet continue to have high reverence for the Vedas and the Vedic Philosophy.
The term Veda
A word in the Sanskrit language, is derived from its dhatu (root). The term dhatu and its power is explained in the book. All individual dhatus together are the ‘powerhouse’ of word formation and no word in Sanskrit is created arbitrarily. There are 1967 basic dhatus in Sanskrit that form the words in Sanskrit lanhuage. In addition, the multiple dhatus forming single words further enrich the Sanskrit vocabulary. When more than one dhatu is used to form a single word, the word reflects the properties of each dhatu in it. Therefore, the foundation for word formation in Sanskrit is built on a methodology that is scientific and is invariant and non-degenerative with time. (continued on top of next panel...)The computer count of the words in the well-known ancient Sanskrit dictionary named “Shabd Kalpdrum” renders over a few billion words in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is not merely a medium for expressing the meaning of the learnt words as many languages are in the present societies.The development of the process of word formation in Sanskrit from a generative dhatu (root) so early in human history is itself an overwhelming invention by the ancient Vedic rishis (sages). When one examines a word in Sanskrit one goes to its dhatu to determine its meaning. After creating a large number of words, a single dhatu by itself continues to be an unenervating fountain of words. This is why a primary letter (alphabet) of the Sanskrit script is termed as akshara, meaning ‘the one that does not decay’, out of which the dhatus are formed. All words formed out of a dhatu are all linked to the parent dhatu and to each other through branching chains.
The dhatu named ‘vid gjyane’ forms the word ‘veda’ in association with the ghang pratyaya. The ‘vid gjyane’ dhatu is for creating words that relate to knowledge and the ghang pratyaya specifies the meanings such as ‘an entity’ or ‘an action’ or ‘an enabler’. Therefore, a pratyaya is that which enables the identity of the item for which it stands. This dhatu and this pratyaya together yield the meanings of the term ‘veda’
such as, the ‘knowledge’, the ‘substance of knowledge’ and the ‘instrument of knowledge’.
When Sanskrit language started to decline after the Mahabharata War,
which ended in 3140 BCE, Rishi Paanini the great Sanskrit grammarian wrote the book of Sanskrit grammar, “Ashtadhyayi Sutra”, with full analysis of dhatu and word formation. Estimates based on recent research in Vedic Literature and history suggest that Rishi Paanini lived a few centuries after Mahabharata. In his Ashtadhyayi (meaning – ‘Eight-Chapter-Book’), he has related the vid dhatu to satta,
laabh and vichaarne, which respectively are - "the reality of creation (existence)", "enlightenment" and "knowledge". These in conjunction with the above pratyayas determine the word 'veda' to encompass "knowledge of the Creator", "knowledge of the creation" and "knowledge of the created substances". The last one is the enlightenment one gets by understanding the nature of Nature and the nature of Nature’s byproducts. When simply put, the implicit meaning of the term 'veda', derived from the
above deeper analysis is ‘revelation of knowledge’. The author has explained in detail certain Vedic Cosmology terms where necessary in the book.
The historicity of Vedic references is proven in Chapter 3. The author adopted a multi-pronged approach to establish several historical time-milestones and established that the Vedas and the Vedic references precede a well-established historical time-marker at 3,140 BCE.
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